


but when it comes to you

by likearecord



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Back on my introspective bullshit, M/M, Post-Canon, Professional Exy (All For The Game), gentle pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29842632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likearecord/pseuds/likearecord
Summary: Six years after Jean becomes a Trojan, he transfers to Jeremy's team.And, well...he's different.
Relationships: Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau
Comments: 25
Kudos: 117





	but when it comes to you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FoxsoulCourt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxsoulCourt/gifts).



> Darling Cory, you beautiful human, you absolute masterpiece of kindness, I wish you the happiest of birthdays. 
> 
> My gift is two-fold: this modest fic offering and my attempt at a new pairing for you. 
> 
> Title courtesy of _Line by Line_ | JP Saxe

When they’d gotten Jean, he’d been—not great. Bruised and battered and bloody and, well. Jeremy knows he is supposed to end that with some grand declaration about how, despite his traumas and his abuses and his injuries, Jean hadn’t been broken. That he’d held within him some unbreakable thing that had bent under the weight but sprung back straight and tall and maybe even stronger for the ordeal. 

But that wouldn’t be true. Jean had been shattered. Wary and obedient and dead-eyed. A goddamned beast on the court, battling hard for every single inch, but blank-eyed and composed off of it. They’d had to coax him out of himself slowly, the way you would a feral kitten hissing at you from the sharp, unkempt bushes lining a Taco Bell parking lot, putting one spoonful of taco meat in front of the other until the starved little thing got close enough to grab. 

Jeremy had painstakingly placed lures for Jean: himself as a roommate, hours on the couch watching game tape, jogs along the beach that left Jean cursing softly under his breath in French about the sand and stubbornly refusing to quit, movie nights with the team, an almost endless supply of novelty t-shirts that Jean held gingerly between two fingers and pretended to like. The first one had said _“Resting Beach Face.”_ It was the ninth or tenth that Jean finally lowered himself to wear: _“Beach, Please.”_

Of course, Jeremy was aware that Jean was beautiful. And smart. And had a dry humor that showed itself in quiet moments, so quiet that you’d only hear it if you stood very close and listened. Jeremy was often standing very close and he was always listening. 

It would have been wrong to be interested, though. Really interested. To have ulterior motives for the time they spent together, for the very slow process of acclimating Jean to friendly touch, for earning the trust it took for Jean to tell Jeremy sometimes, haltingly, in the dark, about some of his experiences at the Nest. 

Anyway, their time was short. Jeremy had a sister who’d gotten out of a bad thing with a guy, a boyfriend, and Jeremy knows he has a reputation, of course he does, but if he could get his hands on that asshole for even ten minutes— but that was all beside the point. The point was, Jeremy knew a little something about the spiderweb Jean had been pulled out of, about the tacky bits of silk, delicate and sticky, that would weigh down his steps and constrain him until they withered, eventually, probably, hopefully. He knew about Jean’s need to be beholden only to himself, to figure out who the fuck ‘himself’ was after Riko, to claim some space that was his own. 

The last thing Jean needed was to be flirted with by his closest new friend. By his team captain. Way too much baggage there.

And then, of course, they’d graduated. They’d gone pro. Jeremy had gone southeast, to Arizona. Jean had gone north, to Seattle. They’d kept in touch—a lot of the team had, thanks to the dawn of the age of smartphones and group chats, thanks to a couple of chaotic group get-togethers where what happened in Cancun had stayed in Cancun and what happened in Vegas had stayed in the memory chips of abandoned cell phones, their carcases shoved into random boxes designed to hold things that would inevitably be forgotten about but a little too nostalgic to just throw away.

Anyway, it had just been the inkling of a crush. Jeremy wouldn’t trade the last six years of friendship for a doomed college fling. He’d rather cut off his own thumbs than be the rushed romantic setback of Jean’s early years of freedom. 

He’s been over it for a long time. He almost got married a couple of years ago, to a woman he’d met in the grocery store, a Biology professor who threw herself at life with a vigor and a determination that could have earned her a spot on the PSU Foxes if she’d been an athlete. They’d done everything together—biked up the West Coast, built houses in El Salvador, took salsa dancing lessons, cooking classes, peyote in the desert, hikes through ancient forests of redwood trees. It had taken time—it had taken almost too much time—for them to realize that they didn't have a single thing to say to each other over the breakfast table. Not one thing worth saying. 

Even with the wedding called off, they’d still gone on the honeymoon; two weeks of zip-lining through jungles and giggling over shots and _finally_ jointly lamenting the hotness of Joseph Gordon-Levitt had been a fitting end to their romance, Jeremy thought. And a fitting beginning to a friendship that he thinks still baffles most of his family. 

Anyway, the sheer delight that Jeremy feels when he walks into his Coach’s office to find Jean sitting in one of the chairs, his fingers steepled together, his brow heavy and serious but his eyes gleaming, has nothing to do with crushes or cheekbones or a few isolated college-aged fantasies about healing Jean with the power of an amazing blowjob. 

“You know Moreau,” Coach says. 

“This French bastard?” Jeremy says easily. “We’ve met.”

For the second time in his life, Jeremy finds himself showing Jean his new locker. Introducing Jean to his new teammates. Taking Jean to the nosebleed seats to survey his new kingdom. The only thing that’s different, really, is Jean himself. 

“You look good,” Jeremy tells him.

 _“Merci,”_ Jean says. “I have not seen the sun in four months.”

“You’ll be a lobster within the week,” Jeremy predicts. 

“You are unfortunately probably right.”

“But hey,” Jeremy says brightly, “we could ease you into it. Slather you in sunscreen. Get you a little umbrella.”

“A parasol,” Jean muses.

“If anyone could make it look good, it would be you.” 

The look he gets in return is fond. And arch and amused, of course, but—there’s a softness to it. There’s a softness in Jean’s voice, too, when he says, “I would make it look _very_ good. Perhaps you have not seen my Under Armour ads.”

“Oh, I’ve seen them,” Jeremy says. Belatedly, he realizes that sounded maybe a little pervy. Lascivious. Inappropriate. He steels himself for the veil to come down over Jean’s face, for the subtle withdrawal, but Jean just...laughs. It rings out through the stadium, easy and happy. A couple of the doll-sized people down on the court look up, searching for its source, answering smiles on their faces.

So, Jean is different this time around.

.::.

Getting-to-know-you beers with the team after the first Friday practice turns into Jeremy and Jean closing the bar alone but for the small herd of empty bottles around them. Jean tells deadpan stories from their college years that Jeremy hears for the first time from younger Jean’s wary, outsider perspective. Jeremy laughs until he cries, the tears hot and stinging in the corners of his eyes and slipping down over his alcohol-flushed skin. He pulls the neck of his shirt up and uses the fabric to dab at the wetness. 

“I can’t believe you walked in on them,” Jeremy says, each breath between words an almost-hiccup of fading laughter. “I can’t believe you never told me.”

Jean shrugs one elegantly sloping shoulder. “The team allowed me my privacy. I thought I should return the favor.” 

“Yeah, totally,” Jeremy says. “But you could have told _me_. We were—” 

Jean lifts an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth the same spare, amused degree. “We were what?”

Close. Friends. Confidants. “Bros,” Jeremy says easily. 

“Bros,” Jean echoes, smiling.

“Pals.”

“You were everything,” Jean says. He lifts his bottle, tips it, gauges the level of lukewarm liquid still sloshing inside. He presses the rim to his still-smiling mouth but doesn’t take a sip. “Riko was the worst a person could be, but you—you were the best.” 

“I get that a lot,” Jeremy says lightly. 

“Did I ever thank you?” Jean asks. “I don’t think I could have, not properly. I knew you were my lifeline then, even as young and fucked up as I was, but I don’t think I truly understood the scope of what you did for me until much later.”

“You always did think that wanting to be your friend was a character flaw.”

“No,” Jean says, suddenly serious. “You created a space for me in your life and allowed me to fill it however I could. It would have been very easy for you to do right by me on the court and leave me to my own devices off of it.”

“No,” Jeremy says. He shakes his head firmly. “It would not have been easy to do that.”

“Not for you,” Jean murmurs, almost too quietly for Jeremy to hear it. 

There’s a beat of silence and then Jeremy, in a rush to fill it, says, “You know they secretly hate each other now. Blair and Harvey.” 

“If they kept doing things the way they were when I saw them, I can’t say that I’m surprised.”

.::.

Jean chooses an apartment that’s all of ten minutes from Jeremy’s house. He’d balked at anything that wasn’t, as he called it, “Walking distance,” and then Jeremy had had to explain to him that he isn’t in Seattle anymore and that the journey from the front door to the car is barely _walking distance_ when it’s 105° out and the realtor had nodded solemnly and they’d all accepted reality and expanded the search radius. 

It’s a nice enough apartment. The ceilings are high, the kitchen expansive, the wood floors pale and modern. It’s furnished, which is convenient—even if the furniture is the kind of sleek, contemporary stuff designed more for looking at than sitting on. It would cost tens of thousands to recreate this look with the true luxury of comfort. You can have cheap and attractive, but not comfortable; you can have cheap and comfortable, but not attractive; you can have comfortable and attractive, but not cheap. Life is full of triangles like that. You can’t have everything you want. You just sacrifice the things you think you can live without.

“Oh well,” Jean says as he attempts to fold his ridiculously long frame onto smooth, toffee-colored leather. “I don’t imagine I'll be spending that much time here anyway.”

Right, Jeremy thinks. There’s practice, a team to meet, a court to master, a city to explore. They’d gotten Jean too late to instill in him a love of achieving a personal best in the field of not leaving the couch for as long as possible. 

“Come on,” Jeremy says. “Let’s go shopping. You’re going to need a bigger TV.”

“Am I?”

“If you’re going to take your turn hosting the team to watch games, then yeah.”

Jean goes for the 75-inch. It’s taller than Jeremy is. If they’d taken Jean’s Mercedes instead of Jeremy’s Land Rover, they wouldn’t have been able to get it home. 

Anyway, what happens is that Jean spends most nights at Jeremy’s. They live so close together and their hours are the same, so it just makes sense to carpool. Jeremy offers about a hundred times to do the driving, but Jean has a very convincing speech about carbon emissions and the responsibility of Americans to step up and stop murdering the planet, so. Jean picks him up, most days, and Jeremy repays him most nights by cooking dinner. 

It’s almost like being roommates again, except Jeremy goes to bed alone and stares at his ceiling and tries to convince himself it would be worth the time to re-install Tinder. He and his fiance hadn’t had much to say to each other in the small hours of the morning, but at least there had been someone to be silent with.

.::.

Jean had said Jeremy made a space for him and allowed him to fill it however he could. They fall so easily back into old routines that Jeremy knows he’d never actually repurposed that space. It’s just that—well, Jean really is different this time around. 

They take to running together again. In college it had been a way for Jean to feel at least a few steps ahead of whatever was chasing him that day. They’d looped the campus over and over, quiet other than the slap of shoes against concrete, until Jean eventually wore himself out and they walked back to their apartment, tired and panting. Now, Jean runs for the joy of it. Apparently, half of that joy comes from taunting Jeremy, who generally prefers the treadmill in his air-conditioned house. 

“Come along,” Jean teases. “How will you ever beat Neil Josten like this?”

“Don’t have to,” Jeremy says breathlessly. He has a side stitch that only aches less if he walks very slowly and presses his hand to it hard. “Exy has surprisingly few footraces between opposing strikers.”

“How will you ever beat Andrew Minyard, then?”

“You know Josten transferred to Minyard’s team because even he couldn’t score on him, right?”

“Hmm,” Jean hums, amused, “somehow I do not believe that was the reason.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jeremy says mournfully. “True stabby love or whatever. But you know it was at least on the _list_ of reasons.” 

Jean inclines his head. Jeremy takes it as some kind of concession and straightens, sighing. 

“Okay,” Jeremy says. “But be gentle with me. I’m delicate.”

Jean’s eyes drift across Jeremy’s shoulders and down one arm, pausing to watch a bead of sweat ride the slope of his bicep. “I think not.”

Stop it, Jeremy tells his quickening heartbeat. Get a hold of yourself, man.

.::.

It’s a three-and-a-half hour drive to the Grand Canyon National Park, but it passes in the blink of an eye. Jeremy spends at least a third of it staring at Jean’s hands on the wheel. They’re elegant, with long fingers, and Jeremy can’t stop watching the play of tendons under the paper-thin, newly tanned skin. 

“Someday you’re going to let me drive,” Jeremy says at one point.

“Perhaps,” Jean says cheekily, “you have not seen my Mercedes ads.”

“Oh, I’ve seen them.” There’s a bit of glumliness in his voice this time, he can hear it. 

Jean hums an approving noise and reaches over to pat Jeremy on the thigh. The tendons flex as Jean pats. It’s mesmerizing. It’s over too soon. 

They take a helicopter into the canyon because neither of them particularly wants to hike the eight miles to the lodge from the trailhead and Jean puts his foot down hard on the idea of riding pack mules instead. The nightly rate at the lodge is a hefty chunk of change for what amounts to a generic hostel, but the money goes to the tribe instead of some obscenely rich CEO somewhere, so Jeremy is happy to pay it. 

Anyway, he would have paid triple the rate, quadruple, if he’d realized how incredible the Falls would be. The water that shoots over the cliff’s edge is a pure, silky white. It crashes into the cerulean pool below and spreads its pale froth like the train of a gown where the waters marry.

Jeremy says, “Wow.”

“Wow,” Jean agrees. 

Removing their hiking clothes is a methodical process of unlacing and unclipping and unbuttoning and folding. Jeremy keeps his eyes firmly on his own work the way he was taught in elementary school, but it’s impossible not to catch the flex of muscle and skin from the corner of his eye. 

“Wow,” Jeremy says, again, when he turns and properly sees the pale white of Jean’s chest, where the sun never reaches on any of their outdoor runs or hikes. 

“Some of us keep our shirts on most of the time. Like civilized people.”

“No, yeah, totally,” Jeremy says. “The permanent tank top look is super classy.”

“Come closer to the water,” Jean encourages. “I’d like to push you in.”

“Sunscreen,” Jeremy reminds him.

Jean smooths the lotion thoroughly onto Jeremy’s back. It’s a special kind of torture. _Eyes on your own work,_ he reminds himself. _Stop fetishizing your friend’s callouses._

The space behind the falls is shaded and loud and the water itself vibrates with the intensity of the joining waters. Jeremy looks at Jean’s classically handsome face, at the wet slick of his hair, and does the only thing he can do. He looks away. He tries to make out the rest of the world through the misting veil of the waterfall. 

After, wet and tired and resting before the two mile hike back, Jean pulls him close to take a selfie. His arm drapes easily over Jeremy’s shoulder and they tip their heads together and somehow Jean is behind him just enough that Jeremy leans in and is held up by the solid span of Jean’s chest and he thinks, _maybe it isn’t an accident?_ Jean’s hand cups loosely around Jeremy’s shoulder, his thumb absently stroking, and Jeremy thinks, _maybe I’m not imagining this?_

Anyway, the hike back to the lodge seems to take an hour longer without the motivation of the Falls to drive them.

.::.

When Jeremy says Jean is different he means—well, it’s hard to put his finger on. Healthier, definitely. Happier, Jeremy assumes. Much more confident. The wry humor that you’d have to strain to hear in the early days doesn’t hide behind a flinch or a hunch anymore. He occupies space more easily. He occupies a lot of space in Jeremy’s kitchen, propping himself up against a counter here or there and easily sliding when Jeremy nudges him out of the way with a hip or a hand or a wooden spoon. 

He occupies a lot of space on Jeremy’s massive, overstuffed sectional, too. Jeremy had bought his house in no small part because it’s thoroughly unsuitable for modern minimalism. Nothing about the high, arching ceilings, the stone slab floors, or the dark wooden beams would tolerate the sleek, spare furniture that modestly dots Jean’s rented white box. 

Anyway, it’s not bad, how much space Jean seems to take up these days. Jeremy would have thought that Jean’s timelessly beautiful features would be out of place in the rustic sprawl of the house, but they aren’t. He thinks, maybe, that Jean had been out of place everywhere but the court for a long time but years of stability and freedom gifted him with some kind of indomitable _I’m here, I’m French, go fuck yourself_ attitude. 

Or, maybe, it’s that the house is too big for just Jeremy. He’d never intended to be just him, had wanted to fill it, but that’s not how things worked out. Sometimes he haunts it himself, drifting through the wide halls and wondering how long you can go alone before you start to lose your opacity. So, he hosts a lot of gatherings.

Or, maybe, it’s the Under Armour ads. There wouldn’t be a thirty-foot-tall Jean in Times Square if he wasn’t nice to look at. 

Or, maybe, it’s all of the above. Maybe this is another one of those triangles life gives you—three options but only two hands. He can be attracted to Jean _or_ he can be a good friend _or_..what? In college, the third point was Jean’s healing. What is it now? 

Or, maybe, Jeremy is over-thinking the pleasure of reconnecting with an old friend. So he had an unrequited, ill-timed crush in college, so what. College was all jam-packed schedules and bitter rivalries and hormones spinning like teacups. They’re adults now, and if Jean sometimes looks at Jeremy in a way that would have sent him up like fireworks back in the old days, well. Jean is different now. They all are.

.::.

The team has all of five weeks to weave Jean into their game before their first match of the season. There are players who make the game look effortless. Jeremy remembers the first time he saw Kevin and Neil really play together. They’d been the tide, somehow moving something deeper than the sport so that everyone else on the court had to bob along the surface. 

Jean is not one of those players. Every move he makes telegraphs effort. Jeremy watches him square off against a striker, his racquet practically vibrating in his hands, his shoulders loose, the muscles in his arms and thighs flexing against the smooth fabric of his uniform. _Come on then,_ Jean’s body says, _but you’re going to have to work for it._

Anyway, they win. There’s a scuffle for the ball in the final moments of the game; Jeremy snatches it away from one of the Houston dealers and passes it to Wheeler. She ducks a backliner’s arm and slams it home and they win, up by four. Wheeler stops and pulls off her helmet to talk to the Houston goalie, who’d been on her first team her first year of pro leagues, so Jeremy jogs to center court alone. Jean is something like 6’8 with his helmet and court shoes on, a goddamn horror show if you’re not wearing the same colors; he meets Jeremy a few yards from the center line and picks him up, ducking and wrapping and lifting so that Jeremy’s feet dangle nearly a foot off the floor. 

A memory hits him like a freight truck: Jeremy scoring the game-winning shot in the playoffs and lifting Jean, bending so far back to do it that they’d both almost hit the floor. The surprised laugh that Jeremy had squeezed out of him.

“I missed this,” Jean says in a voice that only Jeremy can hear over the echoing screams in the stadium. Their helmets collide with dull plastic clacks and Jean keeps Jeremy up off his feet with one arm while he accepts no less than five high-fives from their teammates.

.::.

They get wasted at Aiden Donaghey’s house after the game. It’s a masterpiece of glass and concrete, full of all the hard angles and mirrored surfaces that Jeremy had banished from his own home. The older Jeremy gets, the less he enjoys this tradition but tonight…tonight feels worth celebrating. 

It goes well until Lee gets enough liquid courage to ask Jean about the Ravens and the Nest and Riko fucking Moriyama. Jean says, “I am definitely not drunk enough for that,” and walks off to grab a bottle of something and Jeremy follows him to make sure he’s okay and they wind through hallways full of hideous modern art until they find a study with a couple of club chairs. A quarter of the way through the bottle, Jean leans forward and takes Jeremy’s hands, bringing them up to press to either side of Jean’s flushed face. 

Jeremy makes a sound like a question mark, but Jean just lets go, lets his eyes fall shut, and says, “I just want you to touch me.”

So, Jeremy does. He smooths his thumbs over Jean’s high cheekbones. He traces the high bridge of Jean’s nose. He strokes the soft skin behind Jean’s ears and drags his fingertips down their delicate, hot shells. He is careful and slow. Beneath his palm, Jean’s heart beats fast. Or maybe that’s Jeremy’s.

.::.

Jean shows up on a Saturday morning. He lets himself in with his key and announces his presence by way of NPR, pots clanking, and loud French cursing that makes its way through Jeremy’s enormous house and pulls him out of his Twitter-induced stupor. Jeremy pulls on pants and pads barefoot through the halls until he finds Jean in the kitchen, surrounded by half of Jeremy’s cookware and several paper sacks. 

“Wow,” Jeremy says, amused. 

“Crêpes,” Jean says.

Jeremy looks at the haphazard stacks of pots and pans and says, “What about them?”

“Cute,” Jean says drily. “Make yourself useful and start cutting fruit.”

Obediently, Jeremy reaches into one of the bags and emerges with a nubby cardboard container of strawberries. “So,” he says, casually, “do you actually know how to make crêpes?”

“Of course I do.” 

“Is it because you’re French?”

“ _Bien sûr._ ”

“Okay, but have you ever actually _made_ crêpes?”

“Where is your whisk?” Jean asks smoothly. “I didn’t find it in any of the obvious places.”

The first six crêpes are deemed inedible by Jean, who announces this with aplomb and then tosses them ruthlessly into the garbage. By the time he gets one he’s happy with, Jeremy has hopped onto the counter and eaten about a third of the fruit Jean brought. His kitchen is a complete disaster. The stand mixer is out and speckled with bits of cream that escaped before being whipped into a topping. One pot holds a berry compote that Jeremy would have eaten with a spoon if Jean hadn’t slapped his hands away every time he’d tried. Another holds Nutella that Jean had, inexplicably, added goat cheese and butter to. He hadn’t even let Jeremy near that one with a spoon. 

When the seventh turns out good enough, Jean slathers it with the nutella mix, layers in some thinly sliced strawberries, folds it, and hands it to Jeremy with a fork and a knife; he has to balance it carefully on his knees to cut it, unwilling to drop it but equally unwilling to go seat himself at a proper table and abandon the extremely beautiful man who has put so much effort into making him this thing. 

He closes his eyes as soon as the first bit of flavor hits his tongue. It’s sweet and a little salty, smooth and creamy but cut by the sharpness and texture of the strawberries. He thinks he might moan, a little, but no one who had tasted this could ever blame him. 

“Good?” Jean asks when Jeremy has to open his eyes again to take another bite.

“Amazing,” Jeremy says. “Incredible. Better than sex.” 

Jean’s eyebrows go up, but Jeremy is ready for his disbelief. He spears another bite on his fork and holds it up until Jean opens his mouth and lets Jeremy feed it to him. 

“Hmm,” Jean says. His eyes don’t leave Jeremy’s. “Maybe not quite.”

.::.

Six weeks into the season they fly to Chicago to play Kevin Day’s team, the Colts. The two teams are evenly matched and Jeremy likes to win, of course he does, but winning is incidental to the real point, which is bringing everything you have to the court and seeing how much of it you can leave out there. 

Anyway, they lose, scoring six goals and coming in two points behind the Colts. Afterwards, though, Jean and Jeremy pile into a rental car and drive to Kevin’s gorgeous, pristine Victorian mansion. Kevin’s wife is a curvy Colombian chef named Gabri who plies them with _Aborrajados_ and _Bandeja Paisa_ and crisp IPAs and then leaves them to get drunk and reminisce after promising Kevin three times that she won’t watch the next episode of _Under the Dome_ without him. 

At some point, Jeremy finds himself face-down on one of the lounge chairs on the patio. The roof of the pergola is wound with decades worth of vines and strung with tiny, sparkling lights. Jeremy thinks he’s on his lounger backwards, and that this long part is probably for your feet and not your torso. 

“I am drunk,” Jeremy announces. “You got me drunk, Kevin Day.”

“ _I_ got you drunk?” Kevin asks, amused. 

“It’s a good thing Jean is here to guard my virtue,” Jeremy says. 

Kevin buries a laugh in his beer and then says, wryly, “I think you’re safe. You lost your chance years ago.”

Jeremy cracks an eyelid open and peers across the distance at Kevin, lit in the soft glow of the lights, his dark hair gleaming here and there. “My chance?”

Kevin grins. “I had the _hugest_ crush on you back then.” 

This is news to Jeremy. They’d texted after Jean came to California, sure, talked on the phone intermittently, sent each other congratulations on victories and team signings, but there wasn’t enough there to nurture a crush, Jeremy doesn’t think. He’s about to point this out when Jean straightens from his slump and leans dangerously far to hold his bottle out for Kevin to clink his own against. 

“You too?” Kevin asks. 

“Mmm,” Jean agrees.

“Wait,” Jeremy says. 

“It was probably worse for you,” Kevin says. “You were roommates, right? Or was it, like, up close all the flaws really stand out?”

“What?” Jeremy asks. 

“ _Non,_ ” Jean says thoughtfully. “He was amazing.”

“He didn’t leave heaps of dirty dishes in the sink? Hide his dirty socks in the couch cushions?”

“What?” Jeremy asks again.

“Aaron did that all the time,” Kevin tells him absently. 

“No dirty socks,” Jean says. “But he did seem to be allergic to shirts.”

“Oh, no,” Kevin laughs. “That’s terrible.”

Jeremy finally gets his mental legs under him. His thoughts in a row like ducks. His actual legs under him as he pushes himself up and swivels to face them. “Hold on a minute,” he interrupts. “I call bullshit.”

“About which part?” Kevin asks. 

“You,” Jeremy says, pointing at him and then Jean accusingly. “And _you._ ”

They both blink at him, then turn back to each other. “The problem is that he’s so friendly,” Jean explains, “to everyone, all the time.”

“He used to text me emojis to hype me up before big games,” Kevin muses. “Just a string of shit that somehow worked.”

“It worked because Jeremy Knox sent it to you,” Jean says sagely. 

Kevin points the mouth of his bottle at Jean in acknowledgment and says, “I put that dumb sun emoji next to his name in my contacts. Andrew kept adding the eggplant emoji.”

That new laugh of Jean’s rings out again, filling the trees, filling Jeremy’s chest. Ruefully, Jean says, “I wasn’t in a good place back then. I convinced myself it was hero worship. He was _the_ Jeremy Knox.”

“Hi,” Jeremy says loudly. “I’m sitting right here.”

“Oh, hey Jeremy,” Kevin says. “Did you have an unattainable college crush you’d like to share with us?”

Well, yes. He did. And that guy is sitting right there, a few feet away, watching Jeremy’s face carefully. Jeremy could say it right now, he could say, _Yeah, I had it bad for Jean_ , or he could say, _I was pretty into my roommate_ , but those are things he thinks he should say only to Jean, if he says them at all. And anyway, Jean said he’d _had_ a crush on Jeremy. In college. Years ago. If Jeremy says it now, that he’d liked Jean, that he’d been helplessly attracted to that mess of a man, to that vicious ember inside of him that the whole team had cupped in their hands and fed oxygen, then—well, Jeremy is probably too drunk for that conversation. He’d fuck it up. He’d make things weird.

“I did,” Jeremy says slowly. “But I will keep it to myself. Like a gentleman.”

“A _gentleman_ ,” Kevin scoffs.

“Gentlemen do not kiss and tell,” Jeremy says. 

“Ah, but we are not talking about kissing,” Jean interjects, “we are talking about not kissing.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy says. Jean’s eyes are dark and sharp in the shadow of his brow. Jeremy doesn’t look away. “I know.”

.::.

They don’t talk about it on the drive back to the hotel. Jean drank less, so he sobers up much faster than Jeremy, who still savors the cool glass of the window when he presses his hot cheek to it. 

It’s not until they arrive and park and Jean takes the keys from the ignition that Jeremy says, “It was you.” 

Jean’s hand stills. 

“In college,” Jeremy says. “But what you said, earlier, about not being in a good place…”

“I wasn’t,” Jean says quietly. 

“So, it couldn’t—it wouldn’t have been right, to put that on you. And we’re _friends_ , I mean, not in a settling way or anything, not like a consolation prize, you were my friend. You _are_ my friend.”

“I know.” 

“I didn’t want to say it in front of Kevin and put you in a weird spot, I just—”

Jean interrupts him with no hesitation, saying, “It hit me again on the Las Vegas trip. It was a nothing moment, so you won’t remember it, but you’d brought me a new drink from the bar. It was very loud, so you had to lean very close to tell me what it was, and I almost put my arm around you. It felt like something I was supposed to be able to do.”

“You could have,” Jeremy tells him quietly. His heart starts skipping every other beat, but he keeps his voice and his breath steady by virtue of desperate self control.

“You know, I’d never really dated,” Jean says. “Relationships couldn’t survive the Nest. I had no playbook for any of it.”

Jeremy says, “Okay,” and waits. 

“Anyway,” Jean says, “I’ve been throwing myself at you for three months. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

Jeremy thinks, _oh_ , and, _I guess I’m an idiot_ , and, _yeah, wow, I’m definitely an idiot._ Into the silence, Jean says, “You can be very difficult to read.”

Jeremy blurts, “The best I can do for a first date at this hour is room service and tiny alcohols, so if you want to wait a few days, I can take you somewhere nice.”

Jean has just made this whole confession, so Jeremy knows he should be feeling confident in the answer, but his stomach churns a little anyway. It’s been over six years of ruthlessly suppressing the possibility of something—not _more,_ exactly, but different, moving into a new dimension of it—and those instincts die hard. There’s a restless thing inside of him that wants to protect Jean. From him.

“I think there’s been enough waiting,” Jean tells him. 

So, their first date is a picnic on the floor of Jeremy’s nice, but impersonal, hotel room: grilled cheese and fries at three in the morning. It should be awkward, but it isn’t. Jeremy isn’t sure anything has really changed, other than loose tangle of their fingers resting on Jean’s thigh and the stroke of Jean’s thumb over the back of Jeremy’s hand, setting off sharp sparks of feeling more intense than Jeremy can remember having maybe ever. Maybe with anyone else. Maybe because of the history, of the not-quite-pining, of the never running out of things to say to each other over the breakfast table. Maybe because of the way Jean has always looked at him, with hope and a little bit of awe. 

Maybe because of the way Jeremy knows he must have always looked at Jean.

.::.

Anyway, they tangle up on Jeremy’s bed and kiss until his mouth is raw and tingling and he’s too hard not to rub against Jean’s thigh and he can feel Jean’s arousal pressed against him but neither of them brought condoms and a two-minute handjob in a chain hotel isn’t the memory either of them want for this first time. His insides curl with anticipation, with the yet more deferral of the rest of the night and the plane ride home and the nap they will both inevitably need, so Jeremy fits himself behind Jean on the bed for the few hours they have left, pulls him close, holds him tightly, and breathes in the smell of shampoo that lingers on the skin behind Jean’s ear.

There’s a thrill to it, of course, but it doesn’t feel completely new. It feels like something he’s done a thousand times and never gotten tired of.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to @justadreamfox and @willow_bird, without whom I may never get anything done.
> 
> P.S., glumliness is a word if I say it is.


End file.
